Superintendents Press for School Reform Before Public Support Lags

Washington--A group of 32 school superintendents from across the
country told the nation's educational leaders late last month to get on
with the business of school reform lest the public grow tired of calls
for improvements in schooling.

"If we do not use the current interest in education reform to
improve the capabilities of our schools, the nation's future will,
indeed, be at risk," said the members of the National Consortium for
Educational Excellence in a report presented to Acting Secretary of
Education Gary L. Jones here on Dec. 21. "The public has been so
inundated by reports and reform proposals that the nation will become
bored with repeated reports about the condition of our country's
schools."

In their proposed "agenda for educational renewal," the
superintendents suggested that teachers' salaries be increased across
the board by a minimum of 15 percent and that those salaries be
performance-based. They also proposed adding "more rigor to the courses
that students take," improvements in instructional materials and
methods, and higher levels of parental involvement in the education of
their children.

Consortium's Beginnings

According to Linton Deck, chairman of the department of educational
leadership at the George Peabody College for Teachers at Vanderbilt
University and a leader of the consortium, the 42-page document
released last month was rooted in a meeting of superintendents and
other educators the weekend after the April 1983 publication of the
report of the National Commission on Excellence in Education.

"We took copies of the report to the meeting, we looked at it and
talked about it, and the consensus was that we should undertake an
effort to suggest means to implement its recommendations or to offer
alternative suggestions," Mr. Deck said. The group's charge was later
broadened to include a review of the other national reports on American
schooling that followed the release of the excellence commission's
document.

The consortium received a $250,000 grant from the Education
Department to produce a report, and computer equipment worth $125,000
from the Nashville-based Northern Telecom Corporation to link the 32
participating school districts together.

Forty-two issues raised by the national reports were identified by
the consortium members and Peabody College faculty, Mr. Deck said.
Memoranda summarizing research and opinion on the issues were sent to
the superintendents for their comments via the computer system, and
their responses provided the basis for the consortium's report, he
said.

Regulation vs. Development

In their report, the superintendents called for more balance between
regulatory and developmental policies in reform plans. "Regulatory
policies seek to constrain error and attack weaknesses by describing
and rewarding virtue," they said. Although this approach is useful and
will lead to some improvements, it "[does] not release energy and
[does] not significantly add to the capacity of our schools to do
good."

Developmental policies, on the other hand, "increase the capacity of
teachers and administrators, create conditions in schools which permit
effective schooling to occur, and improve the resources with which
students can learn," they said.

The superintendents also warned would-be educational reformers to
anticipate the problems inherent in change.

"Because reform proposals are sometimes seen as self-implementing,
many of those seeking change feel their job has been done when the
policies are established," they said. "Such a view underestimates the
complexity of the task of reform, the inherent costs and tradeoffs, and
the ability of educators to resist change."

Efforts that do not anticipate the problems of change, they warned,
''[are] likely to have little lasting effect."

Group's Recommendations

The consortium's advocacy of "more rigor" in the courses students
take included more emphasis on mathematics and science at the
elementary level. At the secondary level, they recommended a core
curriculum comprising four years of English, three years of social
studies, three years of math, three years of science, and a half-year
of compu-ter science. College-bound students also should be required to
complete two years of a foreign language, they said.

In addition to calls for pay increases and performance-based
salaries for teachers, the consortium members said they supported the
concept of career ladders, adding that teachers should be given more
opportunities to participate in decisionmaking at the local level.

Under the heading of "joint collaboration," the superintendents
promoted the idea of more direct pa-rental involvement in the education
of children. Schools, they said, should "reach out and involve parents
directly in the education of their children, such as making more
effective use of learning time in the home." The group also called for
additional federal and state resources for preschool
child-development.

Copies of the report are available for $3.50 from the National
Consortium for Educational Excellence, Box 514, Peabody College,
Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tenn. 37203.

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